Two Syracuse University students are the co-creators of the concept Google Envelopes, an online application integrating paper mail and the Internet.

Raul Mahtani and Yofred Moik, both fifth-year industrial and interactive design majors, came up with an idea that could make sending letters in the mail more appealing. The online program they created would send messages in envelopes personalized with a map of the route the letter will take in the mail. The concept is still a work-in-progress and is not yet affiliated with Google, but the two students have already seen the support of interested business and campus specialists.

The idea for the envelopes grew from conversations about the dying use of the U.S. Postal system to send personal mail.

“How do you keep in touch with your grandmother in a situation where she doesn’t understand technology?” Mahtani said. “Hopefully, this will make mail fun enough again that people will want to use it.”

Moik and Mahtani began devising the online application about a month ago and finished creating Google Envelopes in just two days. Theoretically, the Gmail user would have the option to send messages as an e-mail or as a letter in a specially designed envelope with the map of its journey.

“With the advent of technology, mail has lost its course,” Mahtani said. “We wanted to bring snail mail back and make it fun again. This is really about bridging the gap between generations. It would be something like a keepsake.”

Instead of printing the envelope out and sending the letter yourself, the creators conceptualized a system in which the letters would be printed and mailed by people from Google. The creators predict each letter will cost about 99 cents.

Mahtani and Moik submitted their project about a month ago to the Yanko Design blog. The next day it was the blog’s top design. Yahoo! Buzz also picked up the design and it gained momentum until it was in the top four on the site.

After it was posted on Yanko, it was also picked up by other design websites, such as PSFK, Mashable, Engadget, the Daily What, Swiss Miss and Geek, Mahtani said.

On March 31, the blog Engadget wrote that Google Envelopes “might just make the USPS as relevant as it was during the heyday known as 1985.”

Right now, Mahtani and Moik are weighing their options.

“We did not expect this to blow up on the Internet, but now that it has, business people have contacted us,” Moik said.

While the designers couldn’t disclose exactly which companies they are talking to about realizing their idea, the businesses that expressed interest liked the idea of preserving the physical interaction of mail between receiver and sender.

The software is still in the development stage known as “Beta,” and the duo have received creative and professional support from iSchool adjunct professor Anthony Rotolo, SU’s Entrepreneur in Residence John Liddy and industrial design professor Don Carr.

The two creators plan on working with computer programmers for the more technical aspects of their design and will work with business experts as the idea nears its realizations, Moik said.

Both designers are surprised by how quickly the idea has spread.

“We’re a concept, not a business,” Mahtani said. “We are not a company and are in no way affiliated with Google or anyone else for that matter — yet.”

Published on April 6, 2010 at 12:00 pm